icehawk

icehawk

  • Commented on A Wonky Experience
    "please stop blaming the tool for the fool (and/or grifter) who uses it... ain't ChatGPT's fault... guns don't kill people" Actually, guns do kill people. And generative AI fools people. That's what they're built and designed to do. Pretending otherwise...
  • Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
    “ I'm not sure Derek is new school enough to use this modern 'THAC0' thing.” Oh, you can derive it from first principles by looking at the hit tables. You see if you try to fight a demon (say) it...
  • Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
    Re that NYC article: yup. I've said it before and I'll say it again: EVs are great. But right now, EVs are only really great for people like me who own their own house with off-street parking where we can...
  • Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
    "the Orkney child abuse scandal that kicked off in 1991" That matches what happened here in NZ: the "Christchurch Creche" scandal in 1991, which turns out to involve a mum who read US conspiracy theories and police lead investigator who...
  • Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
    Yup, they’ll last at one term in NZ. At least. All of their big “reforms” from the right wing coalition parties are just rolling back things the Ardern Labour govt did. ACT wants more, but no-one else will allow it....
  • Commented on The coming storm
    I don’t get the fascination with storage issues. Peak power usage is daytime in summer. Most domestic power use is hot water, which could be heated daytime in winter with Solar unless you are insanely far North. More importantly, it’s...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    "There's no clear-cut delineation between truth and lies; rather, there's a sliding scale of bullshit." Oh, I'm still waiting for LLMs to really get going in the areas of the economy where they will make the most impact. Like many...
  • Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
    " I used to be big in tabletop roleplaying games (notably AD&D) in my teens but haven't played in 40 years." Slightly off-topic, but - I'm sad to hear that. I'm one of those who expects that "A Conventional Boy"...
  • Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
    " spending about 30 minutes explaining tides " I think you probably under-estimate how complicated tides are in the real world. To start with you've (in theory) got a tidal bulge pulled around the planet by a moon (and another...
  • Commented on Pass or Fail
    “ Yes, I agree that some 'affirmative action' is still necessary, though it isn't the 1950s any more, ” The test came from a 4-panel cartoon in the late 80s, where a character said she didn’t go to Hollywood movies...
  • Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
    Oh, this leads to Consultancies. We’ll hire bright young overconfident people, preferably from outside the field of mathelogical demonology, pay them peanuts, and contract them to you to projects like yours at outrageous fees. And if they make a few...
  • Commented on Shrinking the world
    Edinburgh -> Wellington is notably “further” than London -> Auckland I’m doing Wellington-> Europe this week, my first overseas trip since the pandemic started. London-> Auckland or vice versa is hard, but it’s the connections either end that add up....
  • Commented on Shrinking the world
    The turnpike trusts helped too. Their tolls went on maintaining the roads: and given a lack of general govt maintenance that was a big deal. It also let them effectively regulate to stop people doing things that damaged the roads....
  • Commented on Minor updates
    "Make Hogwarts the worst possible version of the worst possible English public school." That would be Naomi Novik's "A Deadly Education". Which I'd strongly recommend. She starts with the idea that you have a magical school like Hogwarts, where kids...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
    "Unlike the last few patches of high inflation we've had, this patch is attributable mostly to increased corporate profits (under the guise of 'supply chain problems')." I'm not sure there is a "mostly". Inflation is what you get when the...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
    Except the one defining characteristic of 20th century automation was that profit from productivity gains was 100% confiscated. I believe that claim is false. The defining characteristic of early and mid 20th century automation was that profit from productivity gains...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
    Earlier Laundry books tended to each invoke a particular type of spy novel. Is there something similarly referential to a particular subgenre in this novella?...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
    Surely in the computational horror of the Laundryverse it would be The Silence of the Lambdas...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    "So a legend about a disastrous tactical mistake -- the British soldiers were marched slowly into machinegun fire and barbed wire -- turns out to have been less a case of stupidity and more the outcome of an intelligence failure."...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    US presidential candidates have run from in jail before. Because a hundred years ago the USA used to jail left-wing politicians fairly regularly. Socialist Party of America candidate Eugene Debs won 6% of the vote for president in 1912 while...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    "If you asked me to build a drone capable of taking out a mach-ish bizjet at 20km altitude I could definitely do that, given the necessary resources and 90% by buying COTS parts. Bruce Simpson caused a few ructions a...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    “ The reason for its inability to answer your question is therefore quite straightforward: there are probably no accounts on the internet of Lincoln's life which explicitly list his body parts in conjunction with his going to Washington.” I think...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    So what if we built an actual robot and hooked it up to these machine learning algorithms. It starts by "learning" (for want of a better word) to control its limbs, and eventually to walk. It interacts with both people...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    "I wasn't talking about the theoreticians, who were usually away with the fairies (*), but the practioners - including a great many people in unexpected fields (e.g. psychology, linguistics and social sciences)." I think the big turning point back from...
  • Commented on Place your bets
    As someone who had an actual AI/A-Life job back from the 90s I can tell you it's very easy to make AI do something interesting. It's far, far harder to make it do something useful. VC pitches only need the...
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    To each their own. I find a backlit e-ink kindle much better for reading than my IPad mini. Notably lighter, much better very dim light use for reading at 3am (especially in ‘dark’ mode) and enough battery that I can...
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    "can't do much of anything above sea state 4, that is, in 1.5-2.5 metre waves: in sea state 5 it can only make 5 knots," The local car ferry from where I am to the South Island typically runs in...
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    "Swinney is going to turn 59 before the vote is held, which makes him a bit old for a new leader" Hmm. Here in NZ we just had 42-year-old PM Jacinda Ardern retire from being PM, replaced by 44-year old...
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    ChatGPT also reliably suggested 'Thumper' as the name of the hero rabbit whenever there was a named rabbit in the various plots I asked for. I think that's it being a mashup of common cultural tropes, and shows how strong...
  • Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
    Create the plot of a nonexistent video game by Charles Stross about rabbits Same question to ChatGPT about Ursula Vernon gets a co-operative survival game in a beautiful magical land, or a happy bunny-squad game. So I'm trying various SF...
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